Good times

Today I re-watched My neighbor Totoro —which is one of my favorite movies, bless Hayao Miyazaki— and then started cleaning my room because it was a mess. While doing that, I found some old notebooks where I used to write a lot of things. Be it stories or thoughts, these notebooks mean a lot to me.

Of course I re-read what I had written and had some nice memories come back, as well as a whole bunch of feelings. And there is it. I realized something.

When I was younger, I used to write a lot. Most of the time stories, stories that never found an end but I enjoyed writing. I have plenty of them. This one about love, this one about fantastic creatures and this one about life. Lots of small notebooks filled with imaginary worlds and characters.

That was when I was younger.

Ask me now how many stories I have written. How many times I have hold a pencil and started writing out of fun, without a single clue of where it is going and how it will end. Ask me.

The answer is zero.

I haven’t written something just because I wanted to in years. I haven’t hold a pencil to write since God knows how. The actual me doesn’t write a single fucking thing. The actual me doesn’t enjoy her afternoons creating stories and writing them down on colorful notebooks or plain bond paper. The actual me doesn’t write unless is for a fucking assignment. The actual me sucks at finding the correct words to use in her essay.

The actual me is everything I didn’t want to be and now am. The actual me isn’t passionate, idealistic and dreamy as the old me.

The actual me isn’t happy. The old me was and didn’t know because she was absorbed in her stories.

How can I go back to my old self? The one that didn’t care if her writing skills sucked and tried to improve every day. The one that would create lovely characters and places just for fun. The one that would do what she wanted and follow her dream of becoming a great writer. How.

I wanna go back. I wanna go back in time and write, be happy and don’t care if people say that my dream is impossible. Because at that time I believed in myself. Now I don’t. Now I think I suck at everything. Now whenever someone laugh at me for telling them I decided to study Literature, I get small, unconfident and embarrassed. For being such a loser and thinking I could do this.

Why can’t I go back?

I’m trapped. In a routine, every day is the same. I don’t wanna be trapped.

Where did my passion go? My dreams?

I can’t find them. I’ve lost them somewhere in the road and can’t go back to look for them.